


they're picking at their fingers with their knives

by thatsparrow



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 11:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17661758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: Yasha wakes up laying on her side—cheek pressed flat against metal flooring, some ragged and foul-tasting piece of fabric shoved down against her tongue—and she thinks about which fucking bastard she's going to kill first.—Or, Yasha, Fjord, and Jester's missing days with the Iron Shepherds.





	they're picking at their fingers with their knives

**Author's Note:**

> there might be some minor inconsistencies with the canon timeline and the number of days between yasha & fjord & jester getting captured and being rescued, but I'm alright with that
> 
> title from "shankill butchers" by the decemberists

Yasha wakes up laying on her side—cheek pressed flat against metal flooring, some ragged and foul-tasting piece of fabric shoved down against her tongue—and she thinks about which fucking bastard she's going to kill first.

She tries to push herself upright, but she's held fast by the sharp bite of iron chewing into the skin around her wrists and ankles, hands and feet pinioned behind her like some unlucky piece of meat ready for roasting over a spit. Something bound, something helpless, soon to be whittled down to skinned pieces of fur and chewed-around bones, and it's no less than she deserves for having been this fucking _careless._  Wandering through the shadows like some soft-skinned child stumbling towards waiting claws and sharpened canines and so what else did she expect? She should've known better—should've acted faster—but she didn't. No, instead, she let someone rip the blade from her hands, let herself be pushed to her knees, let her mouth be stuffed with this filthy fucking gag that would keep her from tearing out someone's throat with her teeth.

The cage next to her smells of sweat and shit, and Yasha prays to the Stormlord for the mercy to strike her down if this is to be her future. She's sure there must be enough fury in her blood to snap the restraints like so much kindling, to tear through the bars of the cage with all the ease of rending cloth, but when she summons that familiar rage-fueled strength, she falls short. Tenses against the chains, and pulls, _pulls_ , flexing even as she feels her shoulders straining with the effort and her muscles threatening to tear and just keeps fucking _going_ —

"Yasha, _stop_." The voice is quiet and half-muffled, but still recognizable as Fjord's. Yasha turns her head until she can just see him in her periphery, similarly bound and pressed back against the bars, Jester's knee jutting into his hip. There's blood clotted at the corner of his mouth, and it looks like he's worked at his gag with the re-growing tips of his tusks until the cloth is shredded enough that he can just manage to talk past it.

"It's no use," he says, keeping his voice quiet. "I've tried, and Jester's tried, and we managed all of jack-shit trussed up like this. Whatever enchantment they've woven into these chains is keepin' us from going anywhere anytime soon."

Yasha tilts her head towards his hand, hoping he'll understand the question she's trying to ask.

"What — the falchion?" He lets out a laugh, low and humorless. "The thought crossed my mind, but I think I'm more likely to skewer Jester than do any real damage with it. Not like it can saw through metal. Not like I'm in a position to do much more than flick seawater at the fucks that threw us in here. No, far as I can tell, our only option consists of sittin' tight until a better opportunity presents itself. And—who knows—maybe the others will have us run down and set free before much longer." He pauses for a moment, considering. "Then again, maybe they'll see the three of us gone and won't think it as something out of the ordinary. No offense or nothin', Yasha, but sudden disappearances are sort of your MO. Might be that we're hauled away too far to follow before they know something's gone wrong. Might be that we're on our own here."  

Fjord stops himself there, clearing his throat and looking away from where Jester's staring at him, a crease running through her brow like it's a betrayal for him to suggest their companions won't come. There's something sweet to her faith, even for its naivety; Xhorhas taught Yasha better than to wait for the aid of others, or to presume enough goodwill from the gods that they'd extend such a helping hand. No, Yasha knows well enough to know that the three of them should expect no sudden salvation, either from the divine or from the ranks of the Mighty Nein.

(She thinks of Molly, briefly, but even for the friendship between them, this feels like one favor that's too much to expect.)

In one of the other cages, someone starts to weep, just loud enough to be heard over the rattling of the wheels along the road. Yasha rages again, but she might as well be beating her head against the bars for all the good it does.

 

—

 

A few hours later—or maybe minutes, for all she knows—the wagons come to a halt, jostling Yasha further against the walls of the cage as the wheels shift off the road and onto rougher terrain. It's quiet for a moment before the tarp at the back of the cart is tugged upwards, blinding Yasha with the sudden rush of sunlight into the near-dark gloom of the wagon. As soon as her eyes adjust, she finds herself face-to-face with a sneering half-orc woman peering through the other side of the bars, a scar bridged across her left eye and pieces of bloodstained bone threaded into her tangled hair.

"Fuck, Lorenzo," the half-orc says, reaching through the cage to prod at Yasha's face, leaving behind a smear of dirt across her cheek. "Was this the one wielding that greatsword? Shit, she'll fetch a fine fucking price." She reaches up to unlock the cage, pulling the door open until there's enough room for her to haul Yasha out of the back of the cart and onto the ground, sending her face-down into a patch of mud and snow-slicked grass, knocking most of the air from her lungs.

"Don't get me wrong, though—" the half-orc says, and Yasha feels a boot pressing down against the back of her neck, shoving her mouth into the muck, "—high bounty or no, you step one fucking foot out of line, and I will rip you apart until there's nothing left for the earth to remember you by." The boot grinds down further, half-choking Yasha as slush clogs her nose. "Might do the same to those friends of yours, too. Just for fun. Just so the three of you can trade stories in the afterlife about how badly you'd _fucked up_ —"

"Easy, Dwelma." The pressure eases up on Yasha's neck as another figure enters her periphery, their boots stopping a few inches short of where her cheek is pressed against the ground. "There'll be time enough for that later."

"That a promise, Lorenzo?"

"Rough her up as much as you please when we get back to the Nest—spend an afternoon pulling out her fingernails and feeding them to her if you're feeling so inclined—but I don't want this stop lasting more than an hour, understood?

"Besides—" the figure bends down as a rough hand wraps around the column of Yasha's throat, tilting her head upwards until she sees the same bald and tattooed man from the night before, "—the celestial's got enough sense to behave herself, doesn't she? Wouldn't want to do something reckless and make me tear the horns off that tiefling, would she?" He glances towards the cage containing both Fjord and Jester, and Yasha _snarls_ , the sound ripped straight from the back of her throat like something pulled from the pits of a Xhorhasian nightmare. Something with teeth, sharp enough to crack down to the marrow. Black bleeds over her eyes—her necrotic shroud falling like a reflex—but before her wings can unfold, Lorenzo's grip tightens around her neck, a shrinking noose made of muscle and bone.

"Seems I struck a nerve," Lorenzo says, easy even in the face of Yasha's void-dark eyes. "But I'm an obliging fellow, and—if you'd prefer—I could instead be persuaded to cut pieces off of the half-orc until we've reached an understanding. Dwelma, would you care to bet how many fingers he parts with before the aasimar and I are on the same page about the sort of behavior I will and will not tolerate?"

"Maybe she'll take the hint if he loses a hand."

"Is Dwelma right?" Lorenzo leans in closer, thumb pressing down against the pulse point in Yasha's neck. His breath smells of meat, red and rare enough to still have been bleeding as he ate. "Should I start sharpening my glaive, or are you going to play nice?"

Yasha flexes her fingers, itching for the weight of the Magician's Judge in her hands, desperate for anything sharp enough to carve that smug fucking smile from Lorenzo's face. See if he still looks so amused and self-assured when he's choking on his own windpipe. The thought of it makes for a pretty picture—the kind of daydream Yasha's sure she'll return to in the days ahead—but much as she might want to see him bleeding out under her blade, it'd be a neat trick to manage that bound up as she is. Much as she might want to feel his skull crushed to shards under her knuckles, Yasha won't take that gamble if Fjord and Jester would pay for it with their own pain. No, even though Yasha is built for fighting, she understands there's no battle to be had here.

Not yet, at least.

Looking straight at Lorenzo, she pulls back the black film from her eyes, releases the tension from her muscles, and lets her head fall forward, as clear a sign of her submission as she can manage. It's a flavor of humiliation that Yasha hasn't had to taste in some time, but she'll gladly hold it on her tongue if this is what keeps the three of them safe.

Above her, Lorenzo lets out a low laugh, glancing back at Dwelma. "See? She understands the scope of the situation. Smart, for all that she's strong-willed, but I like that. Lends an extra challenge to the breaking, and I do so enjoy a challenge." He lets slip his hold on Yasha's throat and pulls himself upright. From this vantage, he towers over her like a monolith, the mid-morning sun casting his face in silhouette; Yasha drops her forehead back to the ground rather than give him the satisfaction of seeing her neck craned up to look at him, her eyes squinted half-shut against the light. He's already wrung as much of her dignity as she's willing to give. "Now, I think this little exercise has lasted long enough. Dwelma, finish up with her and start working through the others."

He starts to walk out of view as Yasha feels the cuffs loosen around her wrists and ankles, the chains going slack enough that she can stretch her shoulders and hips, can tell where her muscles are cramped in a dozen different places. Feeling knotted and sore like something stuffed to the bottom of a haversack, Yasha pushes herself up onto her forearms, resting there for a moment as she reaches for the gag with her newly-freed hands. Before she can, though, she feels a familiar boot planted square between her shoulder blades, shoving her back to the ground.

"The fuck do you think you're doing?" Dwelma says, lifting her foot off of Yasha's spine before the toe of her boot drives down against Yasha's ribs. "You think you're in a fucking spa or some shit? The chains don't come off so you can feed yourself a steak fucking dinner, this is just about making sure you don't all piss yourselves while we're stuck with you in the wagons." She kicks again, and Yasha feels her rib crack this time, pain radiating out from her side like the sparks she sometimes catches flickering off of Caleb's fingertips.

 _Fuck_ , it hurts.

"I look like I've got all fucking day?" Instead of a boot this time, Yasha feels chipped nails scrape against her scalp as Dwelma's hand twists into her hair, tangling her fingers in the roots as she tugs Yasha's head sharply. "Get the fuck up so we can get this done."

Laying there in the dirt, mud smeared across her cheek and pain streaked along her scalp and a fist-sized bruise surely blossoming over her side, Yasha thinks of how easy it would be to take her unchained limbs and knock Dwelma to the ground. Likely she could crush Dwelma's eyes with her thumbs before anyone got close enough to stop her, feeling them give under her fingertips like the bursting of overripe grapes. Likely she could, but just as likely that, if she did, she'd buy a slow and painful death for Jester, Fjord, and herself.

So she refrains; she holds fast and settles for a fantasy of driving her knee into the soft paunch of Dwelma's abdomen, of snapping off the half-orc's tusks and running the tips through her throat. Savors the image like something sweet on her tongue even as Dwelma hauls her to her feet by that grip on her hair, tearing away strands of it on her nails.

It hurts, but Yasha tells herself that the pain only belongs to this moment. The satisfaction of staining her hands red with Dwelma's blood is something she'll get to carry for the rest of her days.

 

—

 

Fjord is the last one returned to their cage, and as he's shoved back inside, Yasha and Jester can see a new gag cinched tight between his teeth, the fabric catching the light like there's metal woven into the mesh. But with the slant of sun making its way under the edge of the tarp, Yasha can also see the mess that's been made of his face — half of it bruised a wine-dark purple and blood still leaking from where the skin's been split over his eye.

"Fucking tricky, that was," a shifty-looking halfling says from the other side of the bars, grinning in a manic sort of way as he wipes his knuckles on the tarp. "Try it again and Lorenzo will make things simpler by just cutting out your tongue. See how fucking clever you're feeling then."

 

—

 

When Yasha next opens her eyes, she assumes that the Stormlord has answered her prayers and shepherded her to the realms of the dead, because the first thing that she sees is Zuala.

The relief of it is blessed and welcome enough to send Yasha to her knees, stumbling to the ground with all the grace of a newborn foal. She can feel tears gathering against her lower lashes, hanging heavy as ripened fruit, and though ordinarily she would feel shame at weeping so openly, there was never a place for such petty feelings between the two of them. Even after Xhorhas had whittled Yasha into something sharp-edged, even after the days when she earned her title of Orphanmaker and guilt had settled heavy on her shoulders, Zuala had only ever wiped the blood from her palms and pressed a kiss to Yasha's knuckles. _As if I could ever love you any less_ , she'd said while proving that Yasha's hands were still capable of tenderness.

(For as happy and as grateful as she feels at seeing Zuala again, Yasha also feels like there's something bitter caught between her teeth. She can't remember the act of dying and so she supposes the bastards must've slit her throat while she slept, rage brimming up in her throat that they robbed her of the warrior's death that should've been hers. She'd never even told Molly, _goodbye_ , had she? No — Lorenzo had taken that from her along with her life.)

Zuala steps closer and Yasha reaches out towards her—to steady a hand against her hip, to trace the freckles on her shoulder, to brush back the hair falling over her temple—but when she tries, she's held fast by the same iron-cast chains from the cage. She pulls hard enough against the metal that she should be breaking the skin at her wrists, that blood should be running down to stain her nail-beds, but all she can feel is a faint ache that seems more like memory than actual sensation. And that's when Yasha realizes that she can't feel the earth under her knees, and that the world goes blurry beyond the two of them, and she understands that this isn't the afterlife after all, but the shadowy imitation of a dream.

 _No, no, no_ —

"I know, my love," Zuala says, kneeling down in front of Yasha and resting a hand on her cheek. Yasha's own memory tells her how Zuala's touch should feel, but it's a pale replica of what Yasha wants: the warmth of Zuala's palm, the calluses across her fingertips, the divot of a scar at the base of her thumb. "I know, but it's not your time yet."

 _It shouldn't have been yours, either_ , Yasha tries to say, but there's that fucking gag still sitting between her teeth like the cruelest sort of joke. And so all the words that she wants to say— _I love you._ _I'm sorry_. _We never knew tulips in Xhorhas, but they would have made you smile_ , _and, gods, I would give my own life if it meant seeing you smile again_ —are swallowed instead by the fabric. Not that Zuala would have been able to hear them anyway, but Yasha doesn't really give a shit about that particular distinction when her wife is in front of her, when she's right fucking _here_ , pressing a kiss to Yasha's temple and easing the tension in Yasha's brow and if there is any mercy in the world then— _gods, please_ —let her sleep just a little longer.

For once, they oblige.

 

—

 

They're barely an hour on the road the next morning when the wagons come to a jolting stop, sharp and sudden enough to suggest the horse's mouth being broken by the bit, to jostle some of the cages against one another with the grating scrape of metal-on-metal. With her head still resting on Jester's shin and the edge of the tarp tugged low over the back of the cart, Yasha can't see shit of what's going on outside, but she can just make out the sound of hurried, back-and-forth conversation. Voices talking over one another in a manner that suggests unexpected circumstances. _Good_ , Yasha thinks. _Let them worry_.

Before they come to any sort of a resolution, though, they're interrupted by the sound of _something_ colliding with the earth, falling with the heft of a boulder sheared off a cliff's edge, weighty enough to send tremors rippling through the wagon.

That's when bedlam breaks loose.

 

—

 

Later, after the sounds of battle had died down too quickly, after the carts had been shifted back onto the road and driven onwards, Yasha thinks of all that she would say to Fjord and Jester, were she able. _Those were our friends, weren't they? They came for us after all, just as you'd known they would. Followed us and fought for us and bled for us, and it's been so long since Zuala that I'd forgotten what being cared for could look like. But they do care, don't they? Enough to drown out their fear and smother the voice of common sense, and what have I ever done to deserve that?_

If she could speak, though, she'd leave Zuala out of it. No, instead she'd ask the two of them to confirm that it was indeed Beau and Molly that they'd heard no more than a handful of yards away outside the cart. The thrum of Nott's crossbow, the sound of Caleb's spellcasting. _Tell me I didn't imagine it_ , she'd say. _Tell me it was them_.

But there's still that fucking gag sitting on her tongue, and so Yasha instead thinks of all the uncomfortable, sharp-edged truths that she's privately happy to be unable to voice. _I know the tides of battle well_ , she holds in her throat, _too well_. _And, today, they did not fall in our favor. I should have had more faith in them, but I would rather have been right about our abandonment._ She'd never known such jaw-shattering frustration until this morning, as helpless and useless as she'd ever been while the scales had tipped outside, measured and weighed against the Nein. Had her hands and feet not been bound behind her so far from her teeth, it's equal odds whether she would have tried to chew herself free. _I wish they had not come, because I heard fear in familiar voices, and because that battlefield went unconquered by our friends, and there are too many painful answers that account for such an outcome._

But perhaps this is still part of her dream, Yasha thinks, pulling at that thread even as it unravels in her hands. It doesn't seem like an entirely sugar-spun notion, though; this day has had all the makings of a nightmare.

Next to her, Yasha can see Jester glancing down at the Traveler's symbol at her hip, mouthing words around the bulk of the gag. If there was ever a situation worth praying over, Yasha supposes it would be this. She closes her eyes and thinks of rain drumming double-time beats against her skin, the smell of ozone thick in her nose, the wishbone shape of a tree cloven by lightning. _I ask you for so little, Stormlord—_ in her mind, she's calling out over winds whipped up like waves, as cold and unforgiving as saltwater— _but please tell me that they lived. Tell me that I don't have to carry their deaths as I carry Zuala's. I wasn't looking for another family, but I have found something similar enough in them, and so, please, let them be alright. Let them be alive, and unhurt. Let their wounds be stitched back together, their bruises faded to pale yellow. If you have any sway in this world, please look after them as you once looked after me._

(How betrayed she would have felt if she'd known then that this was the day Molly died.)

 

—

 

Had Yasha been awake when the carts passed through the Quannah Breach and out of the Empire, she would have screamed through her gag until the crownsguard at the wall were forced to take notice. Chances are it wouldn't have mattered, that Lorenzo carries more than enough gold to convince the guards they hadn't heard a thing, but either way, Yasha never has the chance to find out. The morning of, the tarp is hauled off of the cart and a blonde half-elven woman moves down the line of cages, reaching through the bars to tap each set of restraints, red-brown light flaring up from the metal when she does. When she gets to the back of the wagon, she goes for Fjord's chains first and Jester snarls in her direction, the muffled sound of Infernal speech rising up from behind her gag.

"Now isn't that cute," the woman says when she sees the way Jester's tail is curled around Fjord's shins. "Relax, sweetheart, Captain Tuskless is gonna be just fine." Light the color of congealed blood glows where her fingers are pressed against the iron, and Yasha can see Fjord's eyelids waver for a moment before he slumps back against the bars, unconscious. The woman glances over at Jester and smiles in a way that turns her face something cruel, a kid peeling the wings off a dragonfly. "You know, he is handsome, isn't he? Maybe Lorenzo will let me take him for a spin before he fucks up that pretty face too much."

Jester starts swearing at her in Infernal, harsh and spitting even past the bulk of the gag, but the woman doesn't flinch, doesn't react, doesn't do anything but grin at Jester before reaching out to her chains and sending her to sleep as well. Even as her voice flickers and the Infernal dies out, her tail seems to wind a little tighter around Fjord, a river-blue lifeline lying between them.

"Hey, Protto—" the woman calls over her shoulder, a halfling looking up in her direction, "—are we starting the pool yet?"

"Wohn's already got ten gold on that firbolg runt from a few weeks back breaking first."

"That's too fucking easy," she says while stretching her hand over towards Yasha. "Put me down for this tiefling with the knight-in-shining-armor complex. I'm telling you, we start stringing hooks through her boyfriend and she's fucking _done_ —"

But that's the last that Yasha hears before the enchantment takes hold, settling over her like a blanketed weight until she couldn't keep her eyes open if she tried. The next time she wakes up, she's on the floor of a narrow, vertical cage, Jester and Fjord locked up together in the opposite corner and Lorenzo looking down at her through the bars.

"Welcome to the Sour Nest, celestial. This is where the fun starts."

 

—

 

They come for Jester the following morning, two bruisers in studded leather hauling her out of the cage by her chains. Fjord tries going for the one closest to the cell door, getting the end of a pole arm rammed into his stomach and cracked sideways across his collarbone for his effort, leaving him doubled over on the floor of the cage as Jester is dragged from the room. Even with the gag still cinched tight between his teeth and most of the air knocked out of him, Yasha can tell he's trying to call out Jester's name.

It's quiet for a moment, but then a muffled scream breaks the silence, sharp and sudden like it was pulled straight from Jester's throat.

 _No, no, motherfucker,_ no—

Fjord throws his shoulder against the door of the cell, but Yasha barely notices as her world goes black, the shadowy film falling over her eyes as the bat-like shape of her wings burst from her back, skeletal and unholy. But the cage is too narrow for them to unfurl properly, and so instead of striking fear into fucking anybody, they're stuck running up against the bars and beating the air around her head, tangled and fumbling like a clumsy, ill-fitting cloak.

"Ain't that a neat trick," Lorenzo says, stepping out of the doorway and moving forward until he's just in front of the cage, close enough that he can reach out to trace the edge of one of her wings, to close his hand around the rill of bone. "Now is this the kind of thing you can do on command, or is it that you need to be all riled up first? Am I gonna get this same performance anytime I start playing rough with Beauty and the Beast—?" he tilts his head in Fjord's direction, still looking squarely at Yasha, "—because, if so, damn if that doesn't give me something to look forward to."

 _I will carve out your eyes and shove them down your fucking throat_ , Yasha thinks, seething. _I will rip out your backbone piece by piece and wear the segments of your spine on a belt made of your own sinew. I will fucking kill you, and I will ensure that you feel every gods-cursed moment of it._

"You know," Lorenzo says, resting his forearm on the stretch of bars above Yasha's head as he leans in closer, "you're not the first to look at me like that. Eyes all full of fury, like you're daydreaming of six different ways to have me skewered and strung up on a pike." He takes a moment to consider her, from the shadow-black curtain that's fallen over her eyes to the folded span of her skeletal wings, and lets out another easy laugh. "Coming from you, though? Fuck, sweetheart. I'm almost tempted to believe it."

His hand shoots through the bars faster than Yasha can follow, closing around her throat like a vise, cutting off the air from her lungs as abruptly as if she'd been plunged underwater.

"Understand, though, that the only thing I enjoy more than seeing that sort of fire is watching it flicker out." He tightens his grip for a moment before letting it go slack, pulling his hand back to run a callused thumb along Yasha's jaw. She jerks her head back from the touch like it's something scalding against her skin, and Lorenzo's smile broadens. "I'm not sure I've ever had an aasimar on my table before, and I can't say I'm not curious to find out exactly what your kind can endure."

Another scream echoes from down the hall, pained and terrified; Yasha's seen Jester take knee-buckling hits on the battlefield without crying out like that before.

"Seems like I've got other business to attend to," Lorenzo says, easy and unconcerned. "But no need to be impatient, darling. I'll be seeing you in the morning."

He takes Fjord with him as he goes, and it's only after he's left the room that Yasha lets her wings fold back into her shoulders, leaning her weight against the bars before her legs give out from under her. She can't cover her ears with her wrists still chained behind her, so she shuts her eyes instead, like the room will blink out of existence if she can't see it, like she can live in this world behind her eyelids where Jester and Fjord are safe and okay. It's an illusion with all the strength of spun sugar, dissolving as soon as the screams start up again.

 

—

 

As promised, the following day is Yasha's turn. It lasts for hours, and she cries out even when she doesn't mean to, even when she's biting down on the gag with white-jawed tension to knuckle through the pain. Lorenzo takes his time, savoring the process like every flex of Yasha's hands is something sweet he can taste on his tongue. She's half-unconscious when his attention is finally called away, and after he puts her to sleep with the enchantment in the chains, Zuala is there in her dream, weeping at what's been done to her wife.

"I'm so sorry, my love," she says, trying to clean the red from Yasha's arms even when her hands can't do more than glide ghost-like over the skin. "Gods, I'm so sorry." She presses a kiss to Yasha's knuckles, above one of the gouges where Lorenzo had driven a hook through her palm. "You have already suffered so much, my love. Too much. If there were any way for me to share your pain, I would bear it happily; I would lock myself in that cell in your stead if the gods would allow it."

 _It's okay_ , Yasha would say if the gag were gone, _it's okay. I lived through losing you, and so I have already suffered worse wounds than this bastard could ever inflict. Please, Zuala, save your tears; if this pain is the cost of seeing you once more, I would happily pay it again_.

 

—

 

Yasha wakes up in the bed of a wooden cart—wrapped up tight in a woven blanket, her wounds healed to faint scars—and doesn't know how to believe that this isn't some new trick, something designed to give way under her feet for Lorenzo's satisfaction at seeing her fall. But when she lifts the edge of the tarp strung over the top of the wagon, she doesn't see the slab walls of the keep, doesn't smell the dried blood soaked down to the stonework, but instead sees the white expanse of a field covered with snow, a half-dozen figures clustered together a few yards away. There's a staff strapped to the back of a cobalt-blue cloak, a cat the color of orange flame curled around someone's neck, the multicolored flicker of Molly's coat moving in the wind.

_They came back._

(But she'll learn soon enough that's not entirely true.)


End file.
